Collecting Team

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From fifty thousand miles up, the situation looked promising. It was a middle-sized, brown-and-green, inviting-looking planet, with no sign of cities or any other such complications. Just a pleasant sort of place, the very sort we were looking for to redeem what had been a pretty futile expedition.

I turned to Clyde Holdreth, who was staring reflectively at the thermocouple.

“Well? What do you think?”

“Looks fine to me. Temperature’s about seventy down there—nice and warm, and plenty of air. I think it’s worth a try.”

Lee Davison came strolling out from the storage hold, smelling of animals, as usual. He was holding one of the blue monkeys we picked up on Alpheraz, and the little beast was crawling up his arm. “Have we found something, gentlemen?”

“We’ve found a planet,” I said. “How’s the storage space in the hold?”

“Don’t worry about that. We’ve got room for a whole zoo-full more, before we get filled up. It hasn’t been a very fruitful trip.”

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